Cold Blood. Alex Shaw

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       Chapter 1

      July 2006. Pushkinskaya Street, Kyiv, Ukraine.

      He was woken by the early morning sun warming his face and the excited barks of his neighbour’s dog scampering around on the communal landing, waiting for his master to lock the door and join him. Outside, three floors below, the swish of the street sweepers tidying up the pavements with their birch-twig brooms echoed gently. Aidan Snow opened his eyes and tried to focus on the ceiling. Gradually the image sharpened as his eyes became accustomed to the bright sunlight. He rolled onto his side and his nose found the empty glass bottle of Desna Cognac nestling between his pillow and the arm of the bed settee. Snow was wide awake now and knew that, whatever he tried, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He was a morning person, which wasn’t exactly a blessing after nights out. Swinging his legs out, he sat up. Never again, he told himself, and not for the first time. The parquet floor was sticky from spilt beer. Snow walked to the balcony doors and opened them, breathing in the fresh morning air. The street-cleaner van approached from the far end of Pushkinskaya Street with hoses spraying water over the dusty road and pavement. Kyiv glowed with pride in the morning sun, the workers below intent on making her even prouder. A well-oiled Soviet machine that still worked fifteen years after the Union had ceased to.

      Snow leaned against the balcony railings and gazed at the Ukrainian capital city he now called home; he had yet to tire of the view. To the left, his street, Pushkinskaya, crossed Prorizna Street and carried on downhill through a high, ornate, double arch into Independence Square. To the right it also sloped downhill, crossing both Bogdan Khmelnitsky Street and Boulevard Taras Shevchenko, before ending at Shevchenko Park and University. These were named after the great Ukrainian writer, their equivalent of Shakespeare, and not the Chelsea footballer, as his pal Michael had insisted. Carefree locals drinking beer and enjoying life were to be found at these meeting places at either end of Pushkinskaya, not to mention the bars that dotted its entire length. For the first time since Poland, Snow was at peace, or as near to it as possible. He took another deep breath – at peace, that was, except for the hangover he was battling.

      It had been another night of cheap beer and ex-pat posturing at his favourite bar, Eric’s Bierstube. There had been the usual faces: the TEFL teachers sitting in one corner, trying it on with their most promising or largest-breasted students, and the so-called ‘serious businessmen’ in the other, downing shots as toasts to clinch deals. The rest of the clientele had been made up of either ‘new Ukrainians’, trying to look casual in their Boss suits, or local university students sipping slowly.

      Snow had sat in his usual corner, his back against the exposed brickwork, and looked on with Mitch Turney and Michael Jones, who played their game of ‘guess the bra size’. As always, the Obolon beer had flowed freely. Michael had guessed at least one correct size before being called home by his wife, Ina. Mitch and Snow had then adjourned to the flat, where one last drink had taken three hours and resulted in five empty beer bottles and the end of the Desna. Mitch had fallen into a taxi and Snow had fallen on the floor.

      He took one more deep breath and walked to the kitchen, collecting the empty bottles en route. His head swam. Never again. It was at times like this that being single was both a blessing and a curse. He had no one to tell him not to drink like a fool until all hours, but no one to come back to. So he drank and partied like, as Mitch put it, ‘a college student on midterm break in Tijuana’.

      Snow padded around his functional kitchen and removed a carton of yogurt from the fridge, which contained the bachelor’s bare minimum: a block of cheese, milk, yogurt and a hunk of ham. The space usually taken up by beer had been liberated. He sipped the thick local strawberry yogurt straight from the milk-style carton and opened the kitchen window. July, and Kyiv showed no signs of cooling down.

      He scratched the mosquito bite on his left buttock. The heat he liked, the heat he enjoyed, but the damn mozzies could be a pain in the arse! They seemed to hide during the day, only to break in and assault him at night if he forgot to plug in the repellent gizmo.

      ‘You’ve grown soft,’ he told himself. ‘How did you ever pass selection; a man who complains about a few bites?’ The former SAS soldier smiled to himself. ‘Perhaps I have, but it bloody itches.’ Snow pulled open a draw and took out a packet of pills. He popped two and chased them with yogurt. Never on an empty stomach, his mum said.

      Saturday morning and in a couple of hours the streets of the capital would be teeming with people. The Kyivites shopping or promenading along the city’s main boulevard – Khreshatik Street – and the visitors from other regions come to sightsee. Kyiv – he loved her. She was graceful, cultured and beautiful, yet overlooked by the West. He hadn’t abandoned her for the holidays like his fellow teachers, but stayed to savour the hot Ukrainian summer.

      This would be the start of his third year teaching at Podilsky School International and he felt at home. Kyiv had been the third-largest city of the mighty Soviet Union, but here in the centre, for all its grand buildings, it still retained a village-like atmosphere, with СКАЧАТЬ